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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26595187">Team Means Pack</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio'>Sholio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Episode: s01e06 Countrycide, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s01e06 Countrycide, Puppy Piles, Team Bonding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:01:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,615</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26595187</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Countrycide in a universe with werewolves.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gwen Cooper &amp; Jack Harkness &amp; Owen Harper &amp; Ianto Jones &amp; Toshiko Sato</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>76</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hold Me: A Comfort Prompfest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Team Means Pack</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts">scioscribe</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for <a href="https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1347813.html">Comfort Fest</a> for the prompt: <i>"Countrycide" in a werewolf universe with pack puppy piles."</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tosh had shifted in that cellar and never shifted back. In the back of the Torchwood SUV, she leaned against Owen, a slim pale-gray wolf with blood plastered on her damp fur, panting anxiously.</p><p>"Stop it, love, I can't breathe for the fur," Owen said mildly, pushing her down.</p><p>They were none of them looking well, in his professional opinion as a doctor: what professional detachment he currently had, anyway. Jack was driving them back to Cardiff because Jack was probably the only one of them who <i>could</i> drive right now without running them off a bridge or up the tailgate of a lorry. Owen's hands were steady only because years' worth of caffeine-fueled A&amp;E rotations had given him the ability to keep his hands rock steady through anything up to and including (he knew this from regrettable personal experience) a terrorist attack.</p><p>But Ianto was covered in blood and bruises, leaning against the window in the front passenger seat; he'd allowed Owen to give him a cursory exam to make sure he wasn't, oh, say, bleeding out from some injury he wouldn't admit to having—which he wasn't, but Owen could smell the blood from here, and it was winding him even tighter. God but he wanted a drink.</p><p>Tosh panted in his ear.</p><p>"Stop it," he said again, pushing her head down.</p><p>And Gwen was crammed in the back with Owen and a wolf-shaped Tosh. Gwen wore a thousand-yard stare and looked like she was about two seconds from shifting herself. She still didn't have full control over it, since Jack had only bitten her a few months ago. Not that it always made that much of a difference; Ianto had been tightly controlled from the very beginning, shifting only if he absolutely had to, while Tosh seemed to enjoy giving herself over to her instinctive, lupine side. But Gwen was still fighting the drop into lupine headspace that triggered a shift, which meant that she was still having trouble doing it when she wanted to, as well as <i>not</i> doing it when she was overwhelmed...like now.</p><p>Their fear, their dismay, their blood and stale panic was a cloying tang in the air. The worst part, Owen thought, about Jack's bite not taking hold fully with him was that he got most of the extras—the heightened senses were especially bloody inconvenient for a doctor, could have mentioned that beforehand, <i>Jack</i>—but he didn't have the release that the others did, of going full wolf and giving himself over to the instinctive part of his brain, the part that didn't care about yesterday or tomorrow, only now.</p><p>Jack braked sharply at a stoplight, and that did it for Gwen: she shifted, and then yelped as the seatbelt tightened around her, clearly no longer having the presence of mind to remember (with the lupine brain in full control) that shifting back would fix it. Owen sighed heavily and leaned over Tosh to unbuckle her. </p><p>"Are we there yet?" he snapped. "Because I've two bloody great wolves to contend with back here, not that I'm complaining."</p><p>"Almost there," Jack said...hardly even smirking about it, which probably indicated how bad off they all were. And Ianto didn't twitch, nor even say anything sarcastic about it. Barely holding onto human shape, he was worse off than either Tosh or Gwen, but wouldn't just <i>shift</i> and be done with it. While Owen wished like hell that <i>he</i> could shift and just not think for a while. Arsehole, he thought, trying to keep hold of Gwen, who had decided she wanted to be down in the footwell for some reason.</p><p>They finally arrived in the Plass car park after about a hundred years, and Owen got out with two sodding wolves, Tosh pale gray and Gwen large and buff with a dark blanket of deep-gray fur over her back. They both shook themselves and Gwen sniffed a lamppost.</p><p>"If you pee on that, you get to clean it up," Owen said. She gave him a disgruntled look. They weren't entirely lupine even when shifted...just mostly. They could understand human speech, but whether they actually <i>cared</i> was the questionable bit.</p><p>Ianto got out of the passenger door with a stiffness that made Owen's back hurt just looking at him, short-circuiting Jack's attempt to get around the bonnet fast enough to give him a hand.</p><p>"Oh, just shift already, would you?" Owen said. "You know you'd have an easier time on four legs than two."</p><p>Ianto just gave him a flat look, and shrugged off the arm that Jack tried to offer, limping along to the Hub car-park entrance without saying anything.</p><p>And it occurred to Owen as he trailed along, his heightened senses alive with the night, that he might actually get why Ianto didn't want to shift right now. It was true that he didn't understand exactly what they felt when they went through a shift, but Ianto had been resisting his shifts ever since the bloody Cyber-girlfriend thing, and...that was it, wasn't it? Giving over to instinct also meant giving over to emotion, and Ianto was afraid of it, even if he'd be having an easier time of it if he'd put the wolf side in charge and give himself permission to stop thinking for a little while.</p><p>Not that Owen gave a damn, obviously. But it was a hell of a thing watching Ianto trying this hard to hold onto his human side when Owen was going to have to drink himself off his arse to get the same effect that all of <i>them</i> could get with half a second's effort.</p><p>In fact...</p><p>He stopped, as Jack punched in the code to open the concrete tunnel leading down to the Hub. Ianto and Gwen went on in; Jack looked back.</p><p>"Owen?"</p><p>"Yeah, you go on," Owen said. "See you all tomorrow. Or whenever."</p><p>"Owen," Jack said. "Get in here."</p><p>Owen took a step back, and ran into Tosh. He hadn't noticed that she wasn't in the tunnel yet. Instead, she pushed him with her furry bulk. Even a small wolf was a lot of wolf.</p><p>"Why not?" Jack said, as if Owen had actually said something.</p><p>"Because—it's obvious, isn't it?" Owen said shortly. "You lot are all going to...wolf and I can't wolf so I'm just going to pick up a few bottles of plonk and get rat-arsed. Don't expect me early tomorrow. Or at all, really."</p><p>"Owen, get <i>in,"</i> Jack said, not loud, but a shiver ran down Owen's spine. </p><p>It was just bloody unfair that he didn't get the full wolf, but Jack's alpha thing still worked on him, even if it didn't quite do it to the same extent that it did with the others. Instead, his stomach twisted up into a miserable ball—the urge to obey tangling up with the core-deep contrary bastard side of himself that just wanted to dig in his heels and do the opposite of what he was told.</p><p>Tosh bumped him from behind, and pushed. Then she nipped the back of his thigh for good measure.</p><p>It was giving in to Tosh, more than Jack, really. Those jaws could do some real damage; the evidence was written in half-dried spikes of blood in the fur around her muzzle.</p><p>"Yeah, whatever," Owen muttered, and he ducked into the tunnel. Ianto and Gwen were waiting a bit farther down, Ianto with his hand buried in the fur of Gwen's back.</p><p>Jack planted a hand between Owen's shoulder blades and pushed him on inside, and Owen <i>hated</i> it, he didn't <i>want</i> the way his knees went weak at it, the way some deeply buried wolf part of him, that just wouldn't come all the way <i>out,</i> wanted Jack to push him around like that.</p><p>("It's like this sometimes," Jack had said, in the beginning when Owen had found out that he couldn't shift the way Tosh and Suzie could; it just didn't <i>work.</i> "Some people don't go all the way over. There's not really anything you can do about it."</p><p>There was a deep apology in the way he said it, and that only made it worse.)</p>
<hr/><p>The Hub felt chilly, like they'd left the heat turned down. Owen was pretty sure it was just emotional shock and the fact that they were all wearing clothes they'd been wearing through an entire night of running around in the woods, with all its attendant dampness. Well, some of them were, anyway.</p><p>Ianto dropped onto the couch and looked like he didn't plan to go anywhere soon. Tosh climbed up and started licking his face, while Gwen dropped across his feet. Just looking at them made Owen bitterly jealous, so he went up to get some blankets instead, and of course Jack came with him.</p><p>"This doesn't need two," Owen muttered, slinking past him. "I'll go call in a pizza order, they're going to need the calories. Accelerated healing and all that." The bruises had already started to fade from Ianto's pallid skin, and he assumed the girls were the same, not that you could tell right now through all the fur.</p><p>"Owen—" Jack said.</p><p>"Don't, all right? Just go see if you can get your bloody shag to shift already before he works himself into a stress-induced coronary."</p><p>"Ianto and I—" Jack began.</p><p>"Jack, just don't already, not tonight, would you?"</p><p>There was exactly one pizza place within easy delivery distance of the Hub that was open all night, which was the reason why they had a standing order there. He ordered as many Triple Meat Feasts as they'd deliver in one go, and then went up to the tourist office to intercept the order. Before heading up top, he dropped into Jack's empty office and picked up a cut-glass decanter of dark amber, unusually alcoholic brandy that was probably expensive enough to keep Myfanwy in sheep for a year. He took some small, nasty pleasure from drinking it from the bottle like two-quid plonk while he waited for the pizzas. By the time the pizza delivery showed up, he was warm and buzzed enough to give the delivery girl the entire wad of cash he'd also nicked out of Jack's desk drawer for a tip. He decided that it made up for the pizza girl who'd gone missing a few weeks ago, in some kind of grand cosmic pizza math.</p><p>When he came downstairs with the pizzas, they were all wolves, because of course they were. Jack was a giant black wolf; Ianto was medium-sized as wolves went, so basically still huge, a bit smaller than Gwen but bigger than Tosh, buff with cinnamon and gray brindling. Someone (Jack, most likely) had laid down blankets and pillows on the floor, and the wolves were draped over them, Ianto with Jack's head laid on his flank and Tosh curled up to tuck her head under Ianto's muzzle.</p><p>Owen laid the pizza boxes on the floor, and wondered once again, as he often did, what he would have looked like as a wolf, if it'd worked out that way. Gray, he thought, the same answer that always came to him, a deep medium gray that complemented Tosh's pale gray.</p><p>He could see it, at times, so clearly that he could almost think it really was something inside him speaking out, some other instinctive part of his soul that spoke through him and let him know what it would have looked like if it had been able to come out all the way.</p><p>Stupid thought; he blamed it on the brandy.</p><p>"Oi, you lot," he said, and Jack cracked open his blue eyes, startling in his black lupine face. "Got your pizzas here. Gonna just open up the boxes so you can get 'em with paws, since I can see opposable thumbs are entirely out the window 'til morning. As for me, I'm not halfway drunk enough for this night yet."</p><p>Tosh sat up and gave a soft, beseeching little whine; her slightly darker ears dipped toward her skull.</p><p>"No," Owen said shortly, and went back up to get more of Jack's expensive alcohol. </p><p>But he came back down, this time with a bottle of bourbon in hand. Ianto and Tosh were at the pizza boxes; they both looked up, each with a half pizza in their wide jaws. Ianto flicked his ears down like he was thinking about growling, then perked them back up.</p><p>"Right then," Owen said, and flopped on the couch. He reached over, after a moment, and retrieved a slice of pizza that didn't look like it had been licked yet. "Anyone fancy seeing if we can get last night's footie on one of those giant sodding screens? Since we all missed it, being in rural hell and all."</p><p>Gwen licked Jack's ear, then jumped up on the couch beside Owen and laid her head down in his lap.</p><p>"Don't be a cow," Owen said, trying to shove her off. She wouldn't go.</p><p>Tosh slurped down another half a pizza, and then came over and gently set her teeth into Owen's jeans leg, and pulled on it, careful not to so much as scratch the skin.</p><p>"No," Owen snapped. He struggled to pull his leg free. Wolf jaws were remarkably hard to pry open, it turned out.</p><p>Ianto munched what pizza Tosh had left behind, and then curled up with Jack again, but Jack was fully awake now and rolled over on his side, exposing a lot of soft-looking dark wolf. The invitation was obvious.</p><p>"The hell I will," Owen said.</p><p>Tosh growled a little, wrestling with his leg.</p><p>"I'm not your sodding chew toy—Gwen, help me out here."</p><p>Gwen's ears dipped, suggesting she hadn't forgotten the "cow" comment. She raised her head after a moment, abruptly sat up, and then shoved her head behind Owen and the couch. He was pushed forward, and nearly fell on top of Tosh.</p><p>Jack raised his head, ears pricked. The air smelled of blood and tension and invitation and 51st-century pheromones, to which Owen suspected they were all building up a tolerance (well, except maybe Ianto).</p><p>"Fine, whatever," he muttered, and climbed down onto the blankets. </p><p>He was immediately surrounded by a wall of heavy, furry bodies, draping across every bit of him. He had to set the half-empty bottle of bourbon aside to avoid having it tipped over. Tosh was lying on his legs, and he had Jack for a pillow and Gwen stretched along his side with her head on his chest, and Ianto curled up beside him, head pillowed on Jack and resting against Owen's shoulder.</p><p>"I hate you lot," Owen muttered, sinking his hands into fur—he wasn't even sure whose. His head was spinning from the alcohol (half a slice of pizza hadn't done much to cut it), and he still ached all over, his wrists burning where he'd been tied, even after Tosh licking him all around the wrists in the SUV. He could smell their...their <i>not-okayness</i>, and somewhere inside him, a medium gray wolf was anxiously stressed out by pack distress even though he had no outlet for it.</p><p>Jack had raised his head and was licking Ianto's ears. He gave one of Owen's ears a quick lick for good measure.</p><p>"Ick. No." Owen pushed him away. Jack sighed and curled around so that Owen was now <i>completely</i> buried in wolf. There was sodding fur <i>everywhere.</i></p><p>Bastards.</p><p>But he still had the wolf senses, and the air smelled like blood and distress and pack and belonging and trust and affection and <i>safe</i> and <i>same same same.</i></p>
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